All Told

LeRoy Neiman, who passed away in June 2012, married fine art to popular art with his brilliantly colored, energetic depictions of sports, celebrities, America at play, life on safari, and locations from the White House lawn to a nudist colony on the Adriatic. Born in St. Paul, Minnesota, he left high school in 1942 to join the U.S. Army, returning four years later to obtain his high school degree. He then studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (where he taught for ten years), the University of Chicago, and the University of Illinois. Early in the 1950s he did fashion illustration for the department store of Carson, Pirie, Scott & Co., where he met Playboy founder Hugh Hefner in 1953. He lived in New York City, overlooking Central Park.